Pie

The world is separated into two groups of women. Women who love to hang out in their living rooms naked, and women who cover up every inch of themselves at all times and possibly wear a raincoat in the shower. I'll bet you can all guess which one I am :)

In light of the festivities of the season I can inevitably spot the Raincoats walking down the street- counting mental calories, deducting side dishes, cocking their heads to one side on the subway when add up the portions from this week and where on their bodies those portions have added up. The worst part, of course, is that all of these women are so beautiful and they have no idea. Thanksgiving is the all American excuse to eat until we throw up...or at least can't stand up straight comfortably. Every year, the men congregate on the living room couches, clutter the floorspace to enjoy football (whatever that is) and digest after each round until they can burp up enough air to make room for dessert. The women flock in droves to the kitchen where they bitch about having eaten too much, regret painted over their shiny lips and look painfully at the dessert their dying for a slice of... I like to think I'm a lady 9 times our of ten. I keep my pinky up when drinking,  could outrun your ass in heels any day of the week and niceties are second hand vocabulary to me. But listen ladies- I'm sick of hearing you whine and bitch over your beautiful bodies so much that I've taken up a spot on the living room floor with the men. I'd rather watch grown men in tights attack each other over a ball than listen to your crap one more time. One slice won't kill you...and if it does, well at least you died happy...

I've spent 25 years watching my gorgeous perfect friends getting ready to go out...standing in front of mirrors pinching nonexistent fat and rubbing thier hands down thier sides, imagining themselves three sizes smaller. When I pop up in the background with a stupid face and push-up bra. I've never been modest. I know for sure I'm no super model, but I think I'm pretty in my own way and I like my body, no matter it's size... it's curvy in nice places and soft and I know I've got pretty eyes, because strange men tell me so on the subway all the time...So what my thighs touch? My legs look killer in stilettos. And who cares if my tummy isn't a perfect flat plane? There's a sexy little dip where each of my hipbones push against my skin. Maybe my lips could be fuller but I've got sparkly eyes and stellar natural black eyelashes...thanks Mom. For every thing about your body that isn't perfect, I'll bet I could name two things that are. Stop wasting time counting your imperfections.I think I can speak for most men when I say they like the softness of your skin, and the curve of your butt and the the little dips and valleys of your body that you freak out over. It's what makes you, you. And not every guy is dying to cuddle a stick figure every night at bedtime. Bones are uncomfortable. End of story.

My guy friends however, and boyfriends (past and present) mostly make goofy faces into the mirror, flex their muscles and simply think "Hell yeah, I look good today". And of course, the girls agree with them as they lean back to look at how big their but has grown...

I've never been a Raincoat. I'm not the type to turn down dessert...I've also never been skinnier than most of my friends and almost did a cartwheel last week in Saks when I fit into a size 6... (mental high five, girl!!) I like hanging out in my house with no clothes on and even better when there are mirrors around so I can make goofy faces. Where as my skinny beautiful friends and perfect sister stand with their goddess-like bodies and cringe at every wrinkle, every dimple and every plane not as flat as pavement. Their skin is glowing, their eyes so bright and glossy and I just can't understand how creatures so beautiful can look into any reflective surface and not think "Hell yeah, I look good today!"

Everyone has certainly got imperfections. But when your boyfriend sees you naked, believe me it's all he can do not to fall on his knees and thank god you let him touch you. He doesn't think, "Oh, my God, her thighs touch!" .. and if he does, he's gay. I've seen so many men almost crash cars trying to stare a little longer at these women. How can people so obviously fawned over ever think "I'm not pretty?" Give yourself a little slack this year girls. Everyone's tired of listening to you bitch anyways. Your boy friend, an his friends, and the pizza delivery guy all think you are very sexy just the way you are. In fact, the pizza delivery guy has been trying to get your number since high school... I'm just saying... So when your man goes to sprawl out on the living room floor and contemplate exactly how much he'll be able to eat for dessert, go cuddle with him, and pretend to watch football, and have a slice of pie. He'll still love you...he'll still think your perfect and sexy and when you go home that night, I promise he'll still try to get in your pants.And tomorrow when you guys look into the mirror, standing next to each other naked you can both say, "Hell yeah, I look good today!"

Happy thanksgiving everyone. Let's eat some pie :)

Hope

I hope in heaven. Most of me wants to say I believe- unconditionally and faithfully- but the realist in me just clings to that sliver of hope we open every Easter and Christmas. A heaven I can touch- maybe not the glittering pearly cityscapes built on cloudy platforms, the dreams of our childhood- but something more than the whatever nothingness is. Because to think that this is all we have is beyond sad. And it fills me with everything void of hope to believe that this world, where hatred is so casual and so cruel is the gift I leave to my children, who will look up to me one day and ask where heaven is and will they ever get there someday? And even if I don’t believe  I will paint them pictures, little sugar covered lies to inflame some sense of hope in them until they are old enough to fear for themselves. So now I wonder if it’s comforting to know that the entire human race, so many cultures, so many people on this one little planet are all stranded together in the murky tossed tides of hope. It’s comforting in a sad way.

Everyone deals with this trial differently- at a young age we are asked to step from the shadows cast by our parents and question these things on our own. How permanent is death? Where is heaven and how far away is it?  Will I ever get there? But so many of our childhood questions get shelved with the other unanswerable voices. Our curiosity fades with time, our adult selves marrying science and philosophy and leaving the religious fairy tales for later dates, when we are old maybe. When we are close to death. No one talks about death openly, or heaven or religion or what to believe in - more for fear of offending someone  than  the idea that you might comfort them.

And it isn’t until we are faced with the truly cold sting of death, when someone we love or knew or was so close to us dies, do we question it. Something sparks inside us, we are left with those unanswered questions from our childhood and so the child and the adult in us battle for some kind of common ground to come up with answers that make sense. Suddenly, no matter our age, we are children. Children forced to grow up in a truly unfair amount of time. We are terrified and scared, screaming inside, tearing at the walls built up around us, engulfed in an unnamed fear for someone we loved, unmoving for no real reason except that they do not breathe. While the adult of us is forced to smile and try to make sense of it, arrange plans, hold hands for the others around us, all looking lost. That one fragile thread of loss and pain and the fear of hope connecting us like spider webs. The silhouette of a human form like glass on the table. The "Thank you for coming, I know the snowstorm is bad." Suddenly, like the breath we all inhale as one, is cold. You’re fighting to stay afloat while the internal battle you’ve been waging is dying to explode... It's electricity illuminates the air, sparks off your skin, burns every fiber of your being.The back of your black high heel is cutting into you, the flowers are all made of a sickly sweet poison, suffocating everyone, fluorescent lights cut sharply through red rimmed eyes. But you can’t feel anything for some reason. It's like you are evaporating. Every sensation is numbed down by grief and hopelessness and fear. So you just smile. Is this the death we were afraid of as children? Because standing in the memory I wonder who had it worse. The person on the table or the crowd crying over the lifeless form?

Eventually the flowers die too. And the cars pull away and the questions fade back into your subconsciousness as life swirls and goes on. And your sighs are heavier than they once were but they’re still the testament that you breathe. Cold sharp air that hurts, but feels good. It’s everything backwards and upside down and we lock all those awful images and feelings away for a time in our future when we can fully understand them. When we are older…

So it isn’t until you’re sitting on the cold hardwood floors of the old bedrooms do you feel that sharpness. In the face of a tiny black hairbrush lined with blond hair. In the glimpse into a vanity mirror reflecting a person who were so sure you knew... now just a sad shadow. Some unnamed emotion overruns you like a tidal wave. Something so painful and poignantly sad it steals the air from your lungs, until your lying on the floor, without enough life even left to cry, just hoping this horrible feeling washes away. You find yourself praying to a God you weren’t sure was even there. The god you once thought you spoke to in the warm glow of a Christmas mass. The light streaming through the stained glass, throwing color onto the snowy fields…and everything smells like incense and Christmas trees. And everyone was so happy...

Can he hear you now? While you’re cold and alone on the floor. Praying for something real, anything, even if its painful, to crash through the open door, collide with you, make you feel something other than this horrific emptiness.Praying for her to feel something, too. But now, eyes glassy, you’re too old to believe the fairy tales of childhood. And so the tears come. And you can try to understand how and why life works the way it does. But in the end you won't...so you simply hope. 

For her sake, for those before and after, for all the fear we feel stretched between us, past the generations and race, and cultures I feel it now. Igniting something like the will to live, the desire to move forward, I feel it. Burning in the tear tracks on our faces, and the cuts on the back of heels and the sad smiles we share when we are confronted with death. Maybe our blurry visions of the pearly city aren't so far off... maybe heaven is just the feeling of being safe after this world dissolves around us, or the idea that while we make the actual journey by ourselves, we won't be alone. I don’t have any real answers.  And now I know, realistically. I don’t know for sure… but I hope.